


Time Stands Still in Kepler

by lanayrusea



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Everybody Cries, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, it's about the found family, spoilers through amnesty 29
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-08 14:08:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19870891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanayrusea/pseuds/lanayrusea
Summary: Everything’s in ruins. Mama outside with the—no don’t think of it—and Barclay out back with Dani, Moira he lost track of and Agent Stern, well, good riddance. Dani looked awful, like she’d been half drowned then sent through a lightning storm, and Jake only saw her for a moment. He’s never been scared of other Sylvans, not even the vampires or the goat people, but Dani, impossibly, lookedscary.Aubrey looks worse.





	Time Stands Still in Kepler

**Author's Note:**

> spiritual sequel to [jane doe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19697830). again, spoilers through episode 29.
> 
> the canon compliance of this fic is perhaps questionable just in terms of time and place but who gives a shit! also idk if it's exactly conventional to have a non main character as your narrator but my best friend's name is jake so i love jake coolice to pieces (coincidentally one of my other close friends is a danielle whom i call dani). anyway i hope you like it :)

Aubrey says, “The mountain.”

Everything’s in ruins. Mama outside with the— _no don’t think of it_ —and Barclay out back with Dani, Moira he lost track of and Agent Stern, well, good riddance. Dani looked awful, like she’d been half drowned then sent through a lightning storm, and Jake only saw her for a moment. He’s never been scared of other Sylvans, not even the vampires or the goat people, but Dani, impossibly, looked _scary_.

Aubrey looks worse.

“Mountain?” says Jake. “Mount Kepler? Aubrey, holy _shit_.”

She’s bleeding again, that puncture in her leg—Jake rushes forward and grabs her shoulders. “Come on,” he says. _What happened to her eyes_

“No,” she says.

“You have to. Just to—” He looks around the lobby. “Just to the table over there. Come on.”

He suspects he wins this fight only because Aubrey wants to argue even less than she wants to sit down. Her steps are heavy, nearly out of sync with each other, as if she’s wearing prosthetics for the first time, and when Jake steers her out of the way of some decorative floor plants she trips and gasps when he catches her.

“Can you try and sit up on the table?” Jake asks as they approach it. “I need to fix your leg.”

She moves her head in a completely inscrutable way but doesn’t fight him as he helps her up onto the table. He rests her bad leg on a chair, then crouches down to examine it and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Whatever Aubrey did back in the car to seal up the wound hasn’t held, and he doesn’t know how long she’s been bleeding. Hell, he doesn’t know how to give first aid, but how hard can it be. The only good thing here is there isn’t still a shard of wood jammed into her leg.

“Wait here,” Jake says, as if she might not, and runs to the kitchen for the first aid kit and a glass of water. His hands are shaking as he runs the faucet and he can smell blood from her wound on his clothes, Christ he can still smell _gunpowder_ the iron in the tap water the steam from the springs and he drops the glass in the sink with a loud _clang_ and it spills all over his sleeves. He swears and reaches for a towel but there isn’t one. He doesn’t know where Barclay puts the extra towels. Stupid fucking thing not to know. He rolls up his sleeves and sets the glass upright in the sink to fill, then grabs it and the first aid kit and returns to the lobby.

Aubrey, slouched atop the table, looks like she’s afraid to move an inch or she’ll pass out, so when Jake comes back she doesn’t acknowledge him at all. He sets the glass of water, a little forcefully, down on the table next to her and opens the first aid kit. He pushes away a pair of tweezers, a finger splint, and a thermometer and fights the urge to overturn the whole damned thing onto the table before he starts finding what he needs—antiseptic, gauze, a roll of cloth bandage, and a needle. There isn’t much of any of it, but it’ll have to do. When Mama comes back she’ll find something in the infirmary to help.

“Drink that,” Jake says, jerking his chin at the water glass. “And, um…this might hurt.”

Faintly, she says, “It’s okay.”

Then they look at him, those glowing eyes, the same color as October’s cold amber moon.

 _What happened_ , Jake thinks, _what happened what happened what_

“Full of firsts for you,” she says, “today. Driving. Emergency medical treatment.”

He manages a smile. “I’m a Jake of all trades.”

For half a second he thinks she’s going to burst into tears, but then it’s gone and he isn’t sure why he thought it. Aubrey says, “Do your worst.”

It’ll be a miracle, probably, if he can get through this without throwing up or something equally foolish, but he’s also almost certain that if he resists keeling clean over there’ll be no way he can make this worse. Even he knows how to stitch.

His hands are still shaking as he uncaps the bottle of antiseptic and pours it over a pad of gauze, sickly cold where it spills on his skin, the fumes off it leaking into the air and stinging in his eyes when he blinks. It smells like Ned’s hospital room. He almost puts it down.

 _Aubrey_ , he thinks. _Aubrey._

Jake crouches down and puts a hand against her bad leg as it rests on the chair. It’s stunning, actually, how much blood has seeped from her wound onto this chair, onto the floor, onto him. If he looked behind him he knows he’d see a trail of it leading from the door.

But it’s only blood. He wrings the excess antiseptic out of the gauze pad and begins to clean Aubrey’s leg, avoiding as best he can any spots that seem to have coagulated. She winces above him, but when he stands again to replace the sullied gauze she seems okay. At least, okay as she’s been tonight. The standards have lowered.

Washed of dried blood, the puncture wound is somehow worse, red and raw and exuding the kind of feverish heat Jake knows from skinning his knees and elbows. And it’s _small_ , almost unfathomable that such a huge amount of blood could have come from an injury of this size—half an inch wide? Less? It must be deep. And when Aubrey wrenched out the splinter in the backseat of Mama’s truck, it looks like she took it at an angle, tearing the skin on the surface even further along the wound. That’s where he’ll have to start.

“I’m going to do a few stitches now,” he says. “Okay?”

She makes a flat noise. Jake has no idea how much he’s hurting her, for better or for worse. For a blinding moment he’s suddenly so convinced this is all a dream he’s about to wake up from that he nearly gets up and walks away. But then he shakes his head once. He’s got a surgical needle in one hand and a bottle of antiseptic in the other, crouching in a puddle of someone else’s blood in the lobby of a public inn—only real life could be so fucking ludicrous.

“Okay,” he says. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

Then he takes his little knife and stabs his friend Aubrey.

The sensation is so vivid he’s immediately hit with a wave of nausea, but he scrunches his eyes shut till it passes. It’s awful. Aubrey’s clutching the edge of the table, hair fallen into her eerie orange eyes. Jake can’t stop shaking.

_Get a grip. Get a grip. You made your goddamn bed._

He opens his eyes, then sees the imprint of the needle just under her skin and nearly loses it again.

“ _Stop it_ ,” he says out loud, teeth clenched.

“What?”

“Nothing. Are you alright?”

“Are you?”

He bites his tongue till his brain won’t let him anymore. Then he stops thinking and grips the needle and pushes it out the other side of the wound in one stark motion.

Aubrey gasps, then exhales like she’s relieved. Neither of them says anything.

Jake continues to sew.

By the end of it his hands are covered in blood and he thinks he’s killed his sense of smell. The stitches are crooked and uneven, but even so he dares to believe the bleeding has gone minutely down. He suppresses a shudder looking at his handiwork, then stands and grabs the cloth bandage roll and another pad of gauze. Aubrey’s face is so expressionless that for a baffling moment he thinks she’s fallen asleep. But then she raises her chin and those cat eyes gleam back at him, alive and miserable.

“I’ll check that off the old bucket list,” he says, feeling lightheaded. “‘Open-wound surgery.’”

She says, “Yeah.”

He notices the water glass. “You haven’t had any of that.”

“I was busy being operated on.”

He takes her point and leans down to disinfect the wound again. “I hope it wasn’t too bad.”

“I thought you might black out,” she says.

“So did I.”

She doesn’t reply. Jake uses some leftover gauze to wipe the blood off his hands, then begins to wrap her leg.

“So,” he says. “Mount Kepler?”

Aubrey presses both hands over her face. “Jake.”

He pauses and looks up. “Yes?”

“Did I ever tell you?” she says. “That I’m sorry about your friends?”

His heart drops into his stomach. She’s talking about the Hornet’s Nest. “I think so, Aubrey.”

“Because I am. I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“They were your friends.”

He stands up. “Aubrey, we can talk—”

“No,” she says. “No.”

Tears well up in Jake’s eyes and he blinks, hard. New topic. “What do you want to eat?”

She looks away. “Not hungry. You choose.”

The thought of food makes him sick, but he isn’t the one who’s lost a quart of blood in one evening. He picks up the glass of water.

“You have to drink this,” he says. “Drink this and then we’ll go to bed. I’ll take you to your room and you can sleep and then we’ll get up tomorrow and” —he wipes his eyes— “and Barclay will make us pancakes.”

Aubrey looks like she hates him. Like she hates him because it’s the only thing to do. Jake knows the feeling. She looks like she’s so tired the only thought she can muster is _Stop_.

“Water,” he says, pressing the glass against her hand. “Please, Aubrey.”

With a dull expression she takes it. She sways slightly as she brings it to her mouth, and Jake grabs her arm and presses his other hand against the side of her ribcage. If she faints now he won’t know what to do. She takes a few slow sips, forcing herself, which only makes him feel worse, and as she shakily sets the glass down on the table there’s a loud _slam_ and the door to the lodge swings open.

Duck. Brow knit, mouth open, covered in soot and fighting for breath. He’s holding a sword Jake’s never seen before, and the expression on his face is like a knife through the heart. He’s _panicking_. He sees the two of them at the table, then drops the sword. And before Jake can tell her _no_ Aubrey has wrested herself from his grasp and takes off running toward Duck, blood glistening on her leg but she doesn’t care she throws herself into Duck’s arms and he begins to cry, eyes still wide open as he shoulders the weight of little Aubrey Little and holds her so tight he nearly lifts her off her feet.

“I told him to leave,” she sobs. “I told him to _leave!_ ”

“Aubrey,” he says. “Your leg.”

She says, “Why have we been here before?”

Jake doesn’t know what that means and apparently neither does Duck, because he doesn’t say anything, just hoists Aubrey into his arms like she’s a child and carries her back across the lobby. He sits them down on a couch near the table, and Jake hastily follows.

“Duck,” he says, “what—”

“You do this?” Duck says, gesturing to Aubrey’s leg.

“What?” he says, taken aback. “Of course not, the hell you think—”

“He _stitched_ it, Duck,” Aubrey says tearily.

“Oh,” Jake says. “Yeah, I did.” Then: “God, is it—?”

“It’s fine,” Duck says. “It’s fine for now. Aubrey, does it hurt?”

“No,” she says, which can’t be true, but no one argues. Duck rubs his eyes and Aubrey hugs him again, and suddenly Jake wonders what it must feel like to have a family on this planet. He looks away.

“Christ,” says Duck. “ _Shit._ ”

No response to that. Jake curls up on the couch and just sits, head spinning. Even under his eyelids his vision feels fuzzy, little sparks dancing like he’s run too far too fast. Some minutes later he becomes vaguely aware of Duck and Aubrey speaking again in low voices, but he doesn’t know what they’re saying and he can’t imagine it’s anything new. Then there’s a slight noise, something far away. He figures he imagined it, until it comes again, and he forces his eyes open and lifts his head.

Jake says, “Is that the grocer?”

They turn to look where he’s looking. A man has appeared in the lobby, crouching over the sword Duck dropped on his way in and similarly dirty, hair blackened from soot and forehead streaked with dried blood. He sees the three of them, then straightens with a grimace.

“Leo,” says Duck, as if he didn’t even hear Jake, and gets to his feet. Aubrey makes as if to stand, too, but Jake puts a hand on her arm.

“Aw, hell,” says the man, and just as the words are out of his mouth Duck has him in a rough embrace, entirely different and entirely the same as the one he gave Aubrey.

“I forgot you were still here,” he says. “I _can’t believe_ you’re still here.”

“You and me, we gave prophecy a good cuff on the ear, didn’t we,” says Leo. “Duck, you’re filthy.”

Jake isn’t certain but he thinks Duck nearly laughs at that. Beside him Aubrey lurches to her feet again, but she’s only reaching for the water glass. She takes a swig, then offers it to him. Distantly he wishes it were something stronger.

“Aubrey’s in bad sorts,” he hears Duck say. “Where’d you put Minnie and Sarah?”

“Still outside,” Leo says gruffly. “What in the Sam Hill are we gonna do with—?”

“No fucking clue. Put them up in the lodge, I don’t know. I want to survive tonight first.”

They look at each other for a moment. Then Duck says, “God, it’s so stupid good to see you.”

Leo cracks a grin. “You saw me twenty minutes ago.”

“It’s always good to see my cool sword uncle.”

Jake turns to Aubrey, who is draining the water glass like she also wishes it were something stronger. “What’s up with them?”

She sets the glass down shakily and Jake grabs it before it falls and breaks. “Leo’s been trying to die for, like, months.”

“What?” he says.

“Pizza Hut,” she says, and abruptly he remembers a grizzled old man sitting outside Ned’s hospital room, gripping a Styrofoam cup of coffee like he wasn’t aware he might crush it. “Now the telescope. He pissed off the cosmos somehow. Ned saved him.”

Then her face screws up again and she curls into herself, forcing her tears into silence. Jake takes her hand and she clutches it so hard it hurts. That antiseptic smell. The hospital room.

_Why have we been here before?_

“You should go to bed,” he says, and puts his other hand on her shoulder. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I _can’t_ ,” she says with such force that Jake starts, and he feels rather than sees Duck and Leo look over. “I have to see Dani.”

“She’s at the spring with Barclay.”

“I know,” she says. “I want to see her.”

That look again, the dull hatred. The exhaustion.

“It’s not safe,” he says, because he has to.

“Jake’s right,” Duck says from over his shoulder.

“What’s safe?” Aubrey says.

He and Duck look at each other, and Duck glances back to Leo. They all know what she means.

Duck says, “You want a piggyback?”

She starts to laugh and ends up crying instead. “ _Fuck_.”

“Come on,” he says, and helps her to her feet. “I swear to God you get woozy we’re taking you straight to St. Francis.”

“I’ll drive,” says Jake, but Aubrey doesn’t smile. Leo, whom he barely knows, puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

“I’m gonna go back out and, uh, herd the cats, so to speak,” he says, mostly to Duck. Jake doesn’t know who Minnie or Sarah are but they must be a handful. “Anyone needs anything just give a holler. Aubrey…”

She looks up at him. He sighs.

“I’m real sorry,” he says. “You too, Duck. I—I know what it’s like.”

Jake is beginning to think Leo is not a grocer.

“Thanks,” Aubrey says, slouching a little. “Duck…let’s go.”

Leo claps Duck on the back, and when he turns to go he catches Jake’s eye and smiles. For a moment Jake feels five years old—feels lost and scared in a place he’s never belonged and all he wants is to latch onto someone who knows which way is up and which way is out. But then the feeling is gone, and so is Leo.

When Jake looks back, Aubrey is quietly engaging Duck in an argument about walking, which he seems to be losing. On the one hand, Jake cannot fathom how you could lose an argument about walking to a woman who should have been hospitalized on account of a skewered leg hours ago. On the other hand, it’s Duck and Aubrey.

“Fine,” Duck is saying hotly, “but one wrong step, Lady Flame, and you—”

“Yeah, yeah, shove it,” she says, which sounds less threatening through the tremor in her voice. She takes Duck’s arm and leans what looks like most of her weight on it, but he doesn’t waver, just helps her on as they become a halting, three-legged thing with a poor sense of direction. Compared to lifting that big sword on the ground— _where did that thing go?_ —this is probably a piece of cake for him. Upper body strength has never been Jake’s strong suit.

He follows along because he doesn’t know what else to do, and after a night of events he is positive will haunt him for the rest of his days, not the least of which was stitching up a gaping stab wound with his own hands, he feels that to be alone in this particular moment would be, fundamentally, bad. That, and he has begun to feel a slight sense of responsibility for Aubrey’s wellbeing. She’s been risking her life for him and everyone else at the lodge for months now. He can’t just leave her.

Ever since the water monster, though, Jake has felt fraught about the spring. It’s just his luck that the place that keeps him alive tried to kill him one day instead. He always tries to go now with Barclay, who’s sympathetic, or Dani, who’s really none the wiser. Dani didn’t see old Aqualung snatch him up from his bath and shake him upside down like the poor hassled ballerina inside a snow globe. Not one of his fondest memories.

But now, even in the dark, the spring is safe. The water lapping at the banks, the gentle rustle of the brush—it’s a little haven of white noise and solitude, just for them. Jake cranes his neck to look at the sky through the fine mist of steam. The stars are beautiful. It’ll never be Sylvain, but that’s no one’s fault. Apparently Sylvain isn’t even Sylvain anymore.

It takes a few moments for his eyes to adjust, but when they do he sees Barclay and Dani both, jackets and shoes lying discarded and sopping wet on the ground, but otherwise in the spring fully clothed. Barclay’s in up to his knees, crouching over an ice-pale Dani, and when Jake sees her face in the starlight—yellow hair tangled and matted with blood, eyes darting under shut bluish lids—he thinks for the first time in quite a few minutes that he is going to pass out.

Aubrey ignores Duck’s protests and detaches herself from him, running to Barclay at the fastest gait she can manage without tearing her stitches or landing head first in the water. “Is she okay?”

Barclay doesn’t seem surprised to see them. “I think so,” he says, “or at least she will be. I got her in the water and she just—keeled over. Duck, that you?”

“And me,” says Jake.

“Mama?”

“Somewhere,” says Duck.

“Shit,” says Barclay. “ _Shit_ , you guys.”

Dani makes some low sound from unconsciousness and Aubrey inhales sharply, grabs Barclay’s arm because she clearly has no idea what to do. Jake wonders if the spring water will help her leg.

“What,” she says, “what’s—how are we—Ned’s the only one who knows what that glowing thing was!”

Barclay doesn’t have an answer. After a moment, Duck says, “That…may no longer be true.”

They all look at him, and he shrugs.

“My, uh—my crew and I may have—seen some things. And, I mean…” He gestures to Dani. “Ain’t she our best bet now?”

“She shouldn’t _have_ to be _anything_ ,” Aubrey says so ferociously Duck takes a step back.

“No,” he says, “of course not—don’t you tell me about having to be something you’re not meant for.”

She drops her head. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. What matters right now is keeping everyone safe. Barclay, how long you been in there?”

“Relax,” he says. “I’m not gonna get hypothermia.”

“Well, forgive me for asking.”

Barclay laughs, though it sounds like it hurts. “Not much left to go wrong around here, huh? Aubrey, would you hold her a minute?”

Jake feels like he shouldn’t be watching as Aubrey dips into the spring and takes Dani in her arms, the sensitivity of the gesture, the warmth of it, feeling altogether too personal and far too sad. Barclay climbs out of the spring and pulls his soaked shirt over his head, wringing it out on the ground, and Jake quickly shrugs out of his coat and offers it to him. He takes it with a nod of thanks.

“I’m going to get some towels,” he says. “If anything happens…”

None of them has enough energy to finish the thought. Barclay waves a hand uselessly and retreats into the lodge.

They fall silent. There’s the water lapping at the banks of the spring, the gentle rustle of the brush. Aubrey’s unsteady breath. After a moment Jake sits cross-legged on the ground, shivering. He wonders out of nowhere if Keith and Hollis are okay—in the chaos he completely lost track of them. He hopes they aren’t scared. He wonders if Dani knows she’s being held by someone who loves her.

 _It’s okay_ , he thinks. It isn’t, but that’s no reason not to think it. _It’s okay._

Something touches his shoulder and he jumps and smacks it away, but it’s only Duck.

“Sorry, kid,” he says, “didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“No,” Jake says, “it’s fine. I’m just—you know.”

“Yeah,” Duck says sagely, and sits down next to him. “I wanted to thank you for helping Aubrey. As a person who’s done, uh” —he grins— “one or two sutures in my time, I know it ain’t easy.”

He’s talking about Billy. Jake hasn’t seen him in a while. “It’s fine,” he says. “I wasn’t even thinking. I should’ve just taken her to the hospital.”

“Stab wound or no, we both know she wouldn’t have let you done that.”

“Well. I should have tried.”

For a moment they look at each other. Then Jake sighs and puts his head in his hands.

“This sucks,” he says hoarsely.

Duck nods. “This sucks.”

After a while he looks up again. At the spring Aubrey is now submerged up to her waist, head bowed, cradling Dani to her chest, and the silhouette they form through the steam and the starlight is out of some painting, some lullaby he heard half-asleep in Sylvain, and the longer he looks at them swaying in the water like the knight and princess in a silent fairytale the more he is certain that he isn’t _looking_ at Aubrey and Dani at all. He’s seeing them. He’s knowing them.

There’s a loud _slam_ from the lodge and a massive, lopsided figure appears out of the light. It’s Barclay, carrying several towels and a blanket in one arm, Jake’s coat and some dry clothes in the other, a thermos in each hand and a flashlight under his chin. Jake takes one look at him and bursts into tears.

“Whoa,” says Duck, sounding alarmed, “it’s okay. It’s just Barclay.”

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know you didn’t _mean_ to, you—here, let me—” He gets up and retrieves Jake’s coat and one of the thermoses. “There. Stop you shivering.”

Jake pulls the coat around his shoulders. At the spring he can hear Barclay and Aubrey discussing softly whether or not to pull Dani out, Aubrey shaking her head no. Turned back in their direction she looks terrible, skin waxy and orange eyes dull in the night. It occurs to Jake that Barclay might actually be trying to convince her to trade places with him again.

“Hot water,” says Duck, handing Jake the thermos.

“Thanks,” he says, and takes a searing gulp. “I’m sorry, I just—are we going to die?”

“What?” says Duck, taken aback.

“The—the— _us_ ,” he says. “Me and Barclay and Dani and Moira and—are we—I just never really _thought_ about it before—”

“Christ, Jake, no,” Duck says, and takes him by the shoulders. “What happened tonight was—it’s not gonna get any worse than this. We’re not gonna let it.”

Jake remembers Duck’s face as he crashed into the lobby not an hour ago, the sheer panic, the tears. It’s hard to believe that they have any control over this at all. Time could stand still in Kepler and they would freeze too, all the rest of this world and the next bustling right along.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Duck sighs heavily and leans back. “Okay.”

“You two?” calls Barclay from the spring. “Come here.”

Jake takes another sip from the thermos and gets to his feet. The Dani discussion seems to have reached a conclusion, at least between Barclay and Aubrey, and the fairytale moment is gone. Now they’re just two sick, tired kids. Jake rubs his eyes.

“She’s been in here a long time,” Barclay says, “longer than is normally necessary for sure. She’s breathing, she responds to touch—I think we should take her out for a few minutes, see how it goes.”

Jake nods, figuring there’s only so much the spring can do after a point. Duck says, “Are we sure that’s safe?”

“Just onto the bank,” Barclay says. “Something goes wrong we take her right back in. _I_ take her right back in.”

Aubrey gives him a heavy look but says nothing. In her arms Dani shifts slightly, eyelids flickering like she’s in a dream.

“Alright,” Duck says. “Take her out, dry her off, see what happens?”

Barclay shrugs helplessly. “Any better ideas?”

“Sylvan health was not taught in the Kepler public school system, no.”

“Then let’s do it.”

Jake is beginning to feel like he’s the cook that’ll break the metaphorical counter’s back, so he stands back with towel and thermos at the ready as Barclay and Duck wade into the water and lift Dani up and out of the spring. Immediately she begins to shiver, and when they crouch and lay her down on the blanket her face contorts as if she knows—and maybe she does—that she’s been taken away from Aubrey. She makes some unconscious or semiconscious noise of protest and grips Barclay’s arm.

“I know,” Barclay murmurs, “I know it’s cold—can you hear me, Dani?”

Jake hands him the towel and he begins to dry her hair. Duck stands and gets another.

“It’s only us,” Aubrey says, voice quivering.

“Only us,” Barclay says. “Come on, Dani.”

 _Come back_ , Jake thinks.

Her grip on Barclay’s arm is turning his skin white. She tilts her head to one side, shoulders curled in like she’s flinching. She looks like she’s _trying_ to wake up.

There’s a pause. Jake hears a frog nearby, hiding in the brush from the sharp mountain breeze. Dani inhales raggedly and they all hold their breath.

Then Duck says, “I hate to be the downer, but this ain’t looking good.”

“Agreed,” says Barclay.

“I can’t tell if this is better or worse,” Aubrey says. “In the spring she’s calmer, but we don’t want—”

“Don’t want calm,” Duck says.

Aubrey nods. “We want awake.”

“Is awake better?” Barclay says. “Is awake what she’s—fighting against?”

Jake says, “I’m pretty sure she’s fighting against vampire.”

Duck points at him in agreement.

“Right,” Barclay says. “Glowy thing makes her vampire. Hot spring makes her—”

There’s another pained gasp and Dani rolls onto her side, coughing needles with a shrill sound that rockets Jake back to the water monster feels it in his eyes in his throat twisting in his lungs and he grabs Duck’s arm, reeling as Dani comes awake in a violent haze.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of!” Barclay is saying, restraining her. “No monsters—you’re back at Amnesty Lodge—”

“Dani, it’s us—it’s me, it’s Aubrey!”

Dani wails in panic and the noise sounds like wind through a chimney, sounds like the fireplace in the lodge on a deep winter night when Mama has kept them up with stories and ironwort tea and Jake feels the water monster shudder and shriek around him before he forces a breath of air into his chest, real, _now_ air the starry Kepler air that was Ned Chicane’s last as he lay dying bleeding out before the gate that will never take them to Sylvain again and Jake breathes and claws his way out.

“Dani,” he says, voice raw, “you’re _home_.”

She gives a falling cry, eyes focusing at last as they find his face, then Aubrey’s, and with another ringing fit of coughs the fight goes out of her and she crumples.

“Oh, God,” says Duck. “Holy shit.”

Jake flips open the thermos and offers it to him. Duck puts a hand behind Dani’s head and helps her sit up to drink from it, which she manages, slowly but without incident. No one talks, but in the brush the frog is singing something serene and thoughtful, and a pair of night birds have landed on the bank at the opposite side of the spring. Jake can hear them chittering as they wash. Aubrey takes Dani’s hand.

“What…what happened?” Dani rasps.

“Not now,” Barclay says, and brushes the hair out of her face. “What do you need? More water? Are you cold?”

She looks around as if she didn’t hear him. “Why am I here? What time is it?”

He just shakes his head. “Don’t worry. How do you feel?”

“Bad.”

“How bad?”

She glances up at Jake, and maybe she looks like some sick wild creature with knotted fur and blood in its jaw, but the recognition in her eyes is more than proof that there’s a girl in there and it’s Dani. Then she looks at Aubrey and gives the barest hint of a smile. She says, “Hit-by-a-funicular bad.”

Duck starts. “ _Please_ don’t joke about that.”

But Aubrey is laughing, a tight, tiny sound, like over the past few hours she’s forgotten how, and Dani grins weakly and then Jake is laughing, too, and he feels everything from the past night, the past month, this past _life_ well up in him like a hot spring geyser and he laughs because he’s alive and because Aubrey is laughing herself a stitch in the side and Dani is trying to but all she manages is a dry cough, Duck is smiling in spite of himself and Barclay looks like he just took a breath for the first time in a century and Jake throws his head back and laughs and he sees the stars and they are beautiful.

“Sweet fucking goddamn,” Aubrey gasps. “I’m gonna tear my stitches. I’m gonna pass out, Jake.”

“It’s not _my_ fault,” Jake says. “Dani said it.”

“Stitches?” says Barclay.

“Oh, fuck,” Aubrey says, teary and grinning. “We didn’t tell you. I got stabbed in the leg and Coolice sewed it up.”

“ _What?_ ”

“It was awful,” Jake says.

“Yeah, it totally blew,” Aubrey says. “But I’m fine now.”

Barclay just stares at them, aghast. Duck elbows him.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll take her down to the infirmary tomorrow and we’ll look at it.”

Barclay seems to wrestle with this for a moment, then sighs and says, “I knew there was a reason we keep surgical needles in the first aid kit.”

Dani says something too low to hear, and they all quiet down.

“One more time?” says Duck.

Dani says, “What now?”

“Now,” he says firmly, “you go to bed, and you too, Lady Flame. Not up for debate.”

“I wasn’t gonna,” Aubrey says, which makes Jake smile, knowing Aubrey could definitely win that argument somehow if she wanted.

Dani tries to say something else but no noise comes out. Duck hastily reopens the thermos and helps her take a drink, and after a moment some of her voice comes back.

“I don’t think I can move,” she says.

“That is not a problem,” Duck says. “You can go to sleep right here if you want.”

“I’ll get all the—” Aubrey starts collecting discarded towels and grabs Dani’s soaked jacket and shoes.

“Yeah,” says Barclay, “show’s over. For now.”

Duck leans over Dani, gathers her into his arms, and gets to his feet. Jake suddenly feels a huge flood of energy rush out of him and he shudders and collapses into Barclay, who puts his arms around him and kisses the top of his head.

“You did so good,” he whispers. “We saved her. We got her.”

“We got her,” Jake mumbles. “Us and Ned.”

Barclay nods. “Us and Ned.”

“He would be happy.”

The two birds on the bank of the hot spring finish their duet, and one of them takes off into the mountain night sky. Barclay smiles a little. “He is happy.”

* * *

Jake dreams about driving that night. It starts off as Mama’s pickup, and for a moment he feels both in and out of control as he relives the events of yesterday evening, one by one until he blinks and looks at the dashboard and suddenly he’s in Rick Dannon’s car, plastic bottles stuck under the brakes just like Duck said months ago but Moira and Aubrey are still here, still in the same spots as before and from the backseat of Mama’s truck he hears a sickening _crack_ as Aubrey pulls the wood splinter out of her own leg and Dannon’s windshield goes white like death and Jake opens his eyes.

The lodge is quiet. It feels like another universe. A look out the window says it’s still dark out, like time came to a complete halt yesterday when the gunshot rang out. Jake sits up in bed and puts on his slippers. Someone’s bound to be awake. Maybe he’ll check on Dani.

The old wood floor creaks underfoot as he opens his door and starts down the hall, trying not to wonder if any of the other Sylvans are still in their rooms or if they’ve fled or if they just vanished when the clock stopped and left him stuck here all alone. It occurs to him he might still be dreaming, but he puts the thought away. Only real life could be like this, uneasy and familiar at once. When you dream, Jake figures, you don’t mind if time stands still.

The door to Dani’s room is ajar, and he sees warm yellow lamplight emanating from inside. He starts to reach for the doorknob but stops. Someone’s talking. After a moment he realizes it’s Aubrey, murmuring softly to a Dani who is awake or not, and through the crack in the door he can tell they’re curled up in Dani’s bed under a blanket Mama gave her one year for her birthday. Jake has one just like it, in blues instead of yellows.

“—the bakery,” Aubrey is saying, “down by Leo’s store, they have an apple strudel I want to try, and the ski resort, we can go with Duck and—and Mama, and Jake, we’ll make a day of it—”

Her words grow too soft to hear for a moment, and Jake waits and listens, feeling frozen outside the door like he’s the one talking to Dani, trying to fix the tiny, lonely world they live in.

“—another family now, because you can have two, right? There’s no rules for that. So you don’t have to feel homesick anymore, because we love you too. I love you too. And besides Dr. Harris Bonkers has decided he likes you so there’s really nothing to be done about it—”

Jake comes back to himself with a silent little laugh. He’s suddenly tired all over—maybe time has started to run again. He goes back to his room, and he goes to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i worry about jake coolice. poor kid. also can we remember that griffin canonically calls him barclay's "precious boy" bc i think about it constantly.
> 
> edit 11/3/19: i just wanted to say to everyone who's left a comment, you are the lights of my life and i am so happy to have shared my story with people who are so kind and as fond of these characters as i am! i know i haven't directly responded to anyone's comments but i reread them all the time and they make me feel really special, so thank you so much!! <3


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